Althaus Nadja, Plunkett Kim
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK.
Dev Sci. 2016 Sep;19(5):770-80. doi: 10.1111/desc.12358. Epub 2015 Nov 5.
Recent studies with infants and adults demonstrate a facilitative role of labels in object categorization. A common interpretation is that labels highlight commonalities between objects. However, direct evidence for such a mechanism is lacking. Using a novel object category with spatially separate features that are either of low or high variability across the stimulus set, we tracked 12-month-olds' attention to object features during learning and at test. Learning occurred in both conditions, but what was learned depended on whether or not labels were heard. A detailed analysis of eye movements revealed that infants in the two conditions employed different object processing strategies. In the silent condition, looking patterns were governed exclusively by the variability of object parts. In the label condition, infants' categorization performance was linked to their relative attention to commonalities. Moreover, the commonality focus persisted after learning even in the absence of labels. These findings constitute the first experimental evidence that labels induce a persistent focus on commonalities.
近期针对婴儿和成人的研究表明，标签在物体分类中具有促进作用。一种常见的解释是，标签突出了物体之间的共性。然而，缺乏关于这种机制的直接证据。我们使用了一种新颖的物体类别，其空间上分离的特征在刺激集中具有低或高的变异性，在学习和测试过程中追踪了12个月大婴儿对物体特征的注意力。两种条件下都发生了学习，但学到的内容取决于是否听到了标签。对眼动的详细分析表明，两种条件下的婴儿采用了不同的物体处理策略。在无标签条件下，注视模式完全由物体部分的变异性决定。在有标签条件下，婴儿的分类表现与他们对共性的相对关注度有关。此外，即使在没有标签的情况下，学习后对共性的关注焦点仍然存在。这些发现构成了首个实验证据，表明标签会引发对共性的持续关注。
